Hi Andy, I have a 2nd hand "Chippahawk "from Skyways Models loosely based on the Chipmunk. It is covered in siver and maroon Profilm. Looks as good as it flys, and it flies outstandingly well. Great web site, FB3 Cheers.

I intend to loosly follow the instructions and won't dwell on the standard build, but I will highlight any deviation from the instructions and try to explain why.

Doublers added as per instructions, there is a discrepancy between the plan and the pre cut wood in that the wing seat does not match the plan. As the plan can stretch I'll go with the wood for now and see where we are later. In any event I'll check the incidence at wing fitting time.

The instructions say to drill the firewall to take the engine mount, I'll do this later when I fit the engine & cowl.

I always take time getting my servos ready. Its all too easy these days to stick
any servo in a model and use the transmitter sub trim to centre the servoc. I
like to take 5 minutes and get the servos as near to centre buy moving the servo
horn on the spline.

The picture shows a servo tester
generating 1.5mS pulse - You can use your transmitter to do this, but make sure
there is no Sub Trim dialed in. The photo doesn't show what we are looking for
but if the horn is moved on the spline the horn can be slightly offset. What I
look for is the best position.

I cut the unused horn arms off, and neatly
sanded the stubs, Its just lazy to keep the cut ends unfinished.

I did not fit the wing tips as I needed to join the
wings first. This is the best way to join wings to keep any errors out of the
final assemly.

Draw a line through the centre of the wingtip here you can
also see some small glue blobs. Make a parallel jig which is as deep as the
required dihedral, plus the distance from the skin to the centre line. The plan
calls for 2" dihedral under each tip, so my spacers are 2.5". Make 2 and
temporarily glue them to the wing tips.

With the wings on a perfectly
flat surface hold down the tips; what this does is it makes sure the tips are
parallel but more importantly they are exactly in the same plane. Any errors
will now be at the centre join. There is nothing you can you about this, but the
errors will have a lesser effect that if it was at the tips. I'd suggest that if
there is more than 5mm error between the 2 panles you request another pair from
the manufacturer. These panels are very good.

Sand the roots to the
correct angle and glue as normal. Once dried the jigs can be snapped off and the
tip cleaned up and the tips fitted.

I looked at this for some time and in my mind I couldn't see how the
instructions would work, but going with the Galaxy method I went with it, and
guess what, the method of installation and operation doesn't work. The geometry
is all wrong, as the flap torque rods move down because of the angle of the
wing, they want to move apart, but can't because of the ball joint. Even
removing the ball joint doesn't fit the problem because youcant get enough
downward movement on the flaps.

The flaps are faces with 6mm balsa,
chamfering this and hinging at the top as reccommended doesn't give enough
downward movement.

My Solution

Because the root blocks wer
drilled during the first attempt they were replaced. Had I remembered I could
have taken the extra 1/2" off of the flap, but I forgot, so they remain 1/2" to
long.

I positioned the torque rods on the trailing edge centre line and
hinged the flaps (With propper hinges) on the bottom.
Now because the centre
lines are different the torque rods will want to move in the blocks, as the flap
goes down the rods will move out. To facilitate this I (luckily) found some
carbon tubing that I made a bearing with.
To make it easier to get
everything aligned, I made the hole in the bearing block a little bit bigger
than the O/D of the carbon rod bearing, using slightly more epoxy than I needed
I fitted the bearing and assembled the flap, the bearing dired perfectly aligned
and any gap was filled with epoxy.

Most (if not all) the flap movement
will be down, but I chamfered the flap L/E to match the ailerons so thay looked
the same, and this will allow me some degree of reflex if I find I need
it.

The centre section was slotted and glued in place, and the entire T/E
aligned just to make sure everything lines up.

The instructions now are out of the window. To make things work 'My Way' from here on in I'll be going solo. Firstly the wing mounting blocks are not identified so I'm using the 2 off 1/4 ply destined for the cowl (did I say I've ordered a Carbon Copy one - more on that later) , and fitted them across the fuselage in a more traditional setup.

By eye I marked the position on the fuselage and took and angle measurement from the wing and epoxied it in place, I've also added a support to give just a little more area for the glue (I know it would have been more effective the other way, but I wanted to keep the mount close to the wing seat.

Before gluing the wing was checked for incidence and alignment, then it was clamped and the screw holes drilled through the wing and into the block, using the already fitted wing hard points as a guide to get the angle right.

Unfortunately the block was say 3mm too far back that I didn't feel comfortable using the captive nuts (they would be over the edge, that I drilled and tapped the holes 6mm to accept the wing bolts. Once tapped I ran some thin cyano into the thread, and re tapped, and repeated one more time. This is a method I've used before with great success.

Also fitted here are the ply wing fillet bottoms.

The Great Mate is really useful for holding the model while getting the wing (and Tail straight and at the right incidence.

On first fitting of the tail to the fuselage it the incidence was way off, about 3mm in measurement not sure what that angle is but I'm sure someone with trig will tell me.

No problems though I just stuck some 3mm sheet over the fuselage and made good again. You can see the line above - this is the zero incidence line and used to set the tail plane incidence. If I hadn't of check it, I would have the tail mounted with the equivalent of 3mm down elevator.

The Elevator & rudder controls are now in, I've decided not to have a rear hatch to get to the controls, but I think I'll bore some holes to give some access that I can cover. This will also take some weight out of the back.

Rudder & Elevator controls

The wing fillets are on, as is the cockpit floor, and some trimmimg and tidying up. The fin is on, in fact I'm about ready for a mamoth sanding session to get it ready for covering.

Fuselage was shaped & sanded and covered with glass cloth applied with PolyC. What a nightmare it took 10 coats to fill the weave, a a whole large can of primer filler to get to a smooth paint ready finish. This was a trial run before I cover my DB big Spitfire, and it think I'll cover that with epoxy or tissue & dope.

I had trouble getting the fin fairing to fit properly, in the end I discarded the supplied ABS one and used balsa. A lot easier to fit, and it still looks scale.

Just doing the finishing touches on said models, so will be back on this one soon. All I need to do to complete is finish the wing covering, the contro surface covering, and radio / engine installation.

Looks excellent. I too am getting a bit bored putting multiple coats of PolyC on glass fibre so am experimenting putting some microballoons in with the polyC for the last couple of coats before using then sanding gently. Should reduce the number of coats needed and ditto the amount of primer.